Abstract
This paper delves into the enacted responses to climate change issues by the European Union. The New Circular Economy Action Plan launched in 2020, is a structured strategy to develop climate-neutral and competitive economies within EU. The paper contributes to an expanding body of literature on the adoption of Circular Economy (CE) technologies, practice and policies which aims to understand the potential environmental and economic impact of this transition. In particular, the paper considers the socio-economic impact of the CE transition on Local Labour Markets. Although literature has extensively studied and discussed the expected 2-3% increase in employment from the CE transition, this paper proposes a novel perspective to disentangle the impact to localized regional labour markets. The paper studies the heterogeneous impact of CE publicly funded projects on local employment levels. It highlights a spatial mismatch between regions and contexts showing growth in employment due to larger implementation on CE projects and other regions showing instead a reduction in employment correlated with the implementation of CE projects. This paper explores the heterogeneous impact and try to establish a causal link with the economic structure of EU regions. The study has relevant policy implications, calling the attention to the mismatch between job destruction and job creation and highlighting the rising risk for harm and exploitation in several EU regions.
Presenters
Federico FantechiResearcher, Department of Economics, Business and Statistics, University of Palermo, Agrigento, Italy
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Technical, Political, and Social Responses
KEYWORDS
Circular Economy; Policy Impact; Local Labour Markets
